Paris Sky

2011

I spent 4 months on a Canada Council international artist residency in Paris, France in a spacious studio with floor to ceiling windows all across the eastern wall. I saw the pink dawn many days, and followed the crisscross patterns of jet contrails that constantly filled the Paris sky, a record of the constant activity of Charles de Gaulle Airport. Apart from depicting ephemeral comings and goings of travelers, immigrants, migrants and residents, these photographs may be viewed as gigantic drawings using jets as drawing tools.

As large-scale inkjet prints they suggest the freedom and exhilaration of flight: the adventure and immediacy of being transported to another reality in a relatively short space of time. A darker aspect points to fear: a potential plane crash, annihilation through global warming and pollution, the difficulty of migration/immigration; the loneliness and trepidation of arriving in a strange country alone, left to navigate an alien culture in a foreign language. Paris Sky suggests an oppositional dialecticbetween beauty, environmental damage, personal adventure and trauma.